Straight White American Jesus - Weekly Roundup: “Kill the Enemy”: Iran War Lies, "Killing" Talarico, + Calls For Political Violence
Aired: 2026-03-20
Duration: 01:09:05


=== High-Profile Defection Significance (13:10) ===

[00:00:07]  Axis Mundi.
[00:00:14]  Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
[00:00:16]  I'm Brad O'Niche, author of American Caesar, How Tech Lords and Theocrats Are Turning America into a Monarchy.
[00:00:23]  Coming in September, founder of Axis Monday Media here today with my co-host.
[00:00:27]  I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
[00:00:30]  With a little bit of a little bit of a cold.
[00:00:33]  I sound like Brad O'Neichi when we record at like five in the morning.
[00:00:35]  I've got like, I've got that going.
[00:00:37]  So, you know, yeah.
[00:00:40]  All right, friends, we're going to talk about Iran and Joe Kent, the counterterrorism official who resigned this week by saying that there was no threat to the United States on the part of Iran and he cannot support a war with Iran.
[00:00:54]  We'll talk about the fallout from that and what it means.
[00:00:57]  We'll then get into some pretty startling new footage from Pete Hex pastor and another podcaster who say that they want, sorry, it's a lot. James Tallarico to be crucified and to die and we'll tell you what that means.
[00:01:16]  We'll then get into a little bit more on the Atlantic piece on Christian nationalism and James Tallarico and sort of clarify some comments and thoughts and analysis there.
[00:01:27]  Give Dan a chance to weigh in after I did so earlier this week.
[00:01:32]  Lots to cover.
[00:01:33]  let's go all right dan here is joe kent Joe Kent is the counterterrorism official who resigned this week, and he immediately went on Tucker Carlson.
[00:02:00]  And that should tell you about Joe Kent.
[00:02:02]  And I'm going to give you a little bit of background on Joe Kent in a minute.
[00:02:05]  But here's what he said about Iran and there being no plan on their part for having a nuclear weapon.
[00:02:12]  Was Iran on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon?
[00:02:17]  No, they weren't three weeks ago when this started, and they weren't in June either.
[00:02:22]  I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling, a fatwa, against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004.
[00:02:28]  That's been in place since 2004.
[00:02:30]  That's available in the public sphere.
[00:02:32]  But then also, we had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed or it was on the cusp of being lifted.
[00:02:39]  The Iranian strategy, it's actually pretty pragmatic.
[00:02:42]  The Iranians are obviously aware of what's taking place in their region, and their strategy was to not completely abandon their nuclear program because they saw what happened to Muamar Gaddafi in Libya when he said, hey, I've got no more nukes.
[00:02:55]  I'll do what you say.
[00:02:56]  I'll give up my nukes.
[00:02:57]  And we gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.
[00:02:59]  Yeah, we regime changed him and he was executed by his own people in the most horrific way.
[00:03:04]  Okay, so this is a guy, as opposed to Donald Trump, as opposed to Mike Johnson, has actual battle experience.
[00:03:11]  He was in combat.
[00:03:13]  He lost his wife to combat.
[00:03:15]  He's what's called a gold star husband.
[00:03:18]  That in itself doesn't mean anything except for he has seen what war is like up front, is what I think that means, which a lot of us have not.
[00:03:25]  He then says, look, there was no plan for them to have a weapon then, now, not anytime soon.
[00:03:33]  It's just not what they're doing.
[00:03:35]  Mike Johnson then said, let me read you the quote here.
[00:03:39]  He says, we all understood there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability.
[00:03:44]  I don't know where Joe Kent's getting his information.
[00:03:47]  The president felt, felt, felt feelings, feelings.
[00:03:52]  The president felt he had to strike first to prevent mass casualties.
[00:03:59]  I got a lot of thoughts, Dan, but I'll throw it to you first.
[00:04:01]  What do you make of the Joe Kent resignation and Mike Johnson's comments and so forth?
[00:04:08]  Yeah, so I mean, Mike Johnson, he does the same thing that you got that comment, however many comments that they've made trying to like gin up a rationale for the Iran thing.
[00:04:19]  But it always remains slippy, slippery, slippery as to what that rationale was, like what the timeline is.
[00:04:26]  Imminent is always a great word for these folks because like what does imminent mean?
[00:04:29]  Is that like, I don't know, half a decade from now?
[00:04:31]  Is that tomorrow?
[00:04:32]  He's been at war with Iran for 47 years, Dan.
[00:04:35]  Yeah, exactly, right?
[00:04:37]  So there's that, and he's going to do whatever Trump tells him to do.
[00:04:41]  The resignation was really, really interesting.
[00:04:44]  And I think neither one of us also thinks Joe Kent's like probably a great guy either.
[00:04:50]  So, you know, he posted his letter of resignation on X on Twitter.
[00:04:54]  And part of it said this.
[00:04:55]  He said, I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.
[00:04:58]  Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.
[00:05:01]  And if he just stopped there, I mean, I think, number one, that's the important thing.
[00:05:04]  And then he goes on to say, it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
[00:05:11]  So there's like the sort of anti-Semitic piece of the MAGA American first, America first wing floating around in there.
[00:05:20]  But even so, and acknowledging that, him coming out and saying there never was a threat and so forth is really significant and probably, I think, probably the highest profile sort of thing like this that's happened so far and the most direct sort of shot at the Trump administration and their rationales for this.
[00:05:38]  And he got the typical administrative dismissals, you know, from the Trump administration.
[00:05:43]  Donald Trump said this.
[00:05:44]  He said, when somebody is working with us that says they didn't think Iran was a threat, we don't want those people.
[00:05:51]  They're not smart people or they're not savvy people.
[00:05:55]  I'll just point out like Trump appointed the guy, right?
[00:05:57]  And this is like standard Trump thing that I don't understand how the Trumpers don't get bothered by this, that every time one of his hand-chosen people like does something that he doesn't like, he says that they were idiots and dumb and bad at their jobs.
[00:06:10]  And you're like, dude, you're the one who appointed them.
[00:06:12]  But the standard dismissals.
[00:06:14]  And I think on one hand, you know, it's a further challenge to the administration.
[00:06:18]  But I think by now, everything's in kind of plain sight.
[00:06:21]  I think it's really, really clear that there was no clear rationale for this.
[00:06:26]  They have not been able to articulate one.
[00:06:28]  There was no clear endgame.
[00:06:30]  Like, you know, here are our set objectives.
[00:06:33]  And when we achieve these, we're done.
[00:06:35]  There clearly wasn't planning for contingencies like the Strait of Hormuz and everybody has talked about this.
[00:06:41]  And Trump is still trying to get people in other countries to come in and help and so forth.
[00:06:45]  So I think it's significant, this kind of high-profile defection.
[00:06:49]  And then it feeds into like, you know, we talked about whether or not there's really fragmentation in MAGA about Iran.
[00:06:56]  And so what does he do?
[00:06:57]  He goes straight on to Tucker Carlson and, you know, he valorizes Charlie Kirk.
[00:07:01]  He floats, you know, kind of conspiracy theories that Charlie Kirk was assassinated because he opposed military action in Iran.
[00:07:08]  So I think there's a lot of interesting pieces there.
[00:07:10]  I think in terms of like revealing anything new, it just confirms what most, I think most observers, including Mike Johnson and including most Republicans know, which is that there was no clear rationale for this.
[00:07:22]  There was certainly no rationale for why now.
[00:07:25]  And when I say that, if you're the Republicans right now, you've got to be asking like, why did this not happen in like October or November?
[00:07:32]  Like get past the midterms and then do what you want or whatever, because this is a huge distraction, you know, from that.
[00:07:40]  On and on and on.
[00:07:42]  So it was, it was really interesting and really telling, but also, I think, not revealing in that sense.
[00:07:48]  Yeah, a couple of points here.
[00:07:49]  One is last week we asked the question, is there really a split in MAGA over Iran?
[00:07:56]  And again, there's poll numbers.
[00:07:58]  Again, there is popular sort of sentiment on the ground and that I think is ever changing and we have to kind of ever monitor it.
[00:08:07]  But this is to me a kind of sign.
[00:08:10]  When you start to see people like this resign, now, Joe Kent is somebody who is from the Pacific Northwest, is kind of Portland-born, makes his way over the river to Southwest Washington, runs for Congress and loses in an upset twice.
[00:08:27]  He lost and then he went again and lost to Maria Glucanson Perez, who is the person who made some waves recently for voting for funding for ICE as a Democrat.
[00:08:39]  A lot of people frustrated with her, but she's the one who beat Joe Kent in the 3rd District of Washington.
[00:08:46]  He lost that first matchup with her for many reasons, but one of them was he was ultra MAGA and he went on Nazi adjacent podcasts.
[00:08:56]  So that sort of tipped it over the edge there.
[00:08:58]  So this is not Mitt Romney.
[00:09:01]  This is not Adam Kinzinger.
[00:09:03]  This is not, this is who this guy is.
[00:09:07]  However, I did mention that he lost his wife to war in the military and military service.
[00:09:12]  So I'm not going to sit here and I don't know.
[00:09:14]  Is this a play?
[00:09:15]  Is this publicity?
[00:09:16]  Is this him looking past Trump to sort of align himself with the Tucker Fuentes America first wing that is growing in MAGA?
[00:09:26]  Is this him acting on principle?
[00:09:28]  Like, I know what war is and I cannot support this.
[00:09:31]  I'm not going to let Americans die in war.
[00:09:33]  I don't know.
[00:09:34]  What I do know is that it's one more thing, one more sign of at least some internal division.
[00:09:41]  Okay.
[00:09:42]  So I think that's number one.
[00:09:44]  Number two, we've talked in the last couple of weeks about the death of expertise.
[00:09:49]  This is an administration that views expertise as an encumbrance, something that slows down men of action who act without thinking, who don't need others.
[00:09:58]  They don't need to invest in relationships.
[00:10:00]  Nah.
[00:10:02]  When Joe Kent was running for Congress and lost, Trump said he's amazing.
[00:10:05]  I love this guy.
[00:10:06]  On March 17th, he said, like this, on three days ago on St. Patrick's Day, I always thought he was weak on security, very weak.
[00:10:14]  It's a good thing he's out.
[00:10:15]  Mike Johnson.
[00:10:16]  I don't know.
[00:10:17]  Yeah.
[00:10:18]  Good thing you said he was the best thing ever when he was running for Congress.
[00:10:22]  Moreover, Mike Johnson says, I don't know where he's getting his information.
[00:10:26]  And it's like, we've now reached a place.
[00:10:30]  If I zoom out, Dan, and this is going to feel like a 30,000-foot kind of perspective, it's just really disheartening to live in a world where there is so much misinformation that someone like Mike Johnson can basically say about one of the top counterterrorism and other officials in the country.
[00:10:48]  Yeah, I don't know where he's getting this weirdo information.
[00:10:50]  It's like he's getting them from classified info, Mike.
[00:10:54]  That's his whole job.
[00:10:56]  You appointed him, like the president appointed him to get information that is highly sensitive, classified, and to analyze that so that he can advise the president on what we should do in cases like Iran.
[00:11:11]  So to just say, well, I don't know where he's getting his information is such an indication of like, well, if somebody disagrees with you, either say they're weak or say, well, their information's bad and I did my own research.
[00:11:24]  I have my own facts and this is what it is.
[00:11:26]  And here's Mike Johnson sort of just pedaling that line.
[00:11:29]  It's really disheartening to live in that kind of world.
[00:11:32]  There is a world where this would have mattered.
[00:11:35]  It would have mattered when Nixon or Bush or Reagan or Clinton were president that a top official like that basically comes out and says about the president's war, you know what?
[00:11:44]  There's no rationale for it.
[00:11:46]  There was no threat.
[00:11:47]  I have all the info.
[00:11:48]  I'm the guy that was hired to do the job.
[00:11:50]  And, you know, there's no way for us to justify that.
[00:11:54]  So I think that's a takeaway for me.
[00:11:56]  I do want to talk about what he said about Charlie Kirk, but any other thoughts here on Kent and his resignation and what it means within MAGA?
[00:12:05]  Just like one really basic thing.
[00:12:07]  You talk about that 30,000-foot view thing, but like it's really weird.
[00:12:12]  And every now and then I'll get a student who will ask us, so you talk about like all the Christian nationalism and blah, blah, blah.
[00:12:16]  Like, yeah, like, what does that mean?
[00:12:18]  Lay it all out.
[00:12:18]  They're like, so like, does it bug them to lie like all the time?
[00:12:23]  You're kind of like, yeah.
[00:12:24]  There is that.
[00:12:25]  There is that basic, like, you know, I don't know.
[00:12:28]  Nobody wears their Christian, their good old Southern Christian identity on their sleeve like Mike Johnson does.
[00:12:35]  And the dude is an inveterate liar, like for a living.
[00:12:38]  That's all he does is lie and spin shit for Trump.
[00:12:42]  And I don't know.
[00:12:43]  It's just another thing that's like maybe so banal.
[00:12:45]  We're so far past it at this point that like it's maybe not that noteworthy, but it's just, it really is sort of bizarre too.
[00:12:52]  And, you know, people sometimes ask, like, I don't know, was the Christianity you grew up in different?
[00:12:57]  And I'm like, well, like, one, like, we were supposed to be honest and stuff.
[00:13:00]  Like, that was a thing.
[00:13:01]  But yeah, just the constant disinformation and misinformation and just open, bald face lying and deception is, yeah, it's, it's disheartening.
[00:13:12]  So Joe Kent does say in his interview, and I don't, I'm actually not going to play the clip.

=== Stealing Your Way of Life (09:05) ===

[00:13:17]  And I was thinking about it.
[00:13:18]  He says that he was prevented from investigating Charlie Kirk's murder.
[00:13:22]  No.
[00:13:22]  And the FBI wouldn't let him and this kind of stuff.
[00:13:24]  So, you know, I don't know.
[00:13:26]  It's hard because on one hand, there is part of me that thinks that that rings true.
[00:13:32]  There's another part of me that's like, there's a lot of, as you said, Dan, there's a lot of wink-wink here to anti-Semitic America first MAGA who's like, or whatever it's called, because he's basically saying he's going somewhere that Tucker really wants to go, which is that Israel ordered a hit on Charlie Kirk.
[00:13:52]  He wants it.
[00:13:53]  They're sort of giving fuel to that fire that the Nick Fuentes and Tarko Carlsons want to stoke.
[00:13:59]  And so anyway, that's what he said.
[00:14:01]  Let's just, before we take a break and go to the Tallarico Christian assassination stuff from this week, let's go to this fact.
[00:14:11]  Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth want $200 billion for this war in Iran.
[00:14:15]  Okay.
[00:14:16]  And here's Pete Hegseth explaining why we need that.
[00:14:19]  $200 billion.
[00:14:20]  I think that number could move, obviously.
[00:14:24]  It takes money to kill bad guys.
[00:14:25]  So we're going back to Congress and folks there to ensure that we're properly funded for what's been done, for what we may have to do in the future, ensure that our ammunition is, everything's refilled, and not just refilled, but above and beyond.
[00:14:37]  I mean, President Trump, as he said, rebuilt the military in his first term.
[00:14:40]  Didn't think he'd use it as dynamically in his second, but he had.
[00:14:43]  So thank goodness he did that.
[00:14:45]  And an investment like this is meant to say, hey, we'll replace anything that was spent.
[00:14:48]  And now that we're reviving our defense industrial base and rebuilding the arsenal of freedom and cutting deals like our great deputy secretaries here is doing long lead times on exquisite munitions.
[00:14:56]  We're going to be refilled faster than anyone imagined.
[00:14:59]  And I think, you know, we're also still dealing with the environment that Joe Biden created, which was depleting those stockholds and not sending them to our own military, but to Ukraine.
[00:15:09]  Which is when you, every time we reach back and look at any sort of a challenge we have, it goes back to, well, send it to Ukraine.
[00:15:15]  Ultimately, we think this should be these munitions are better spent in our own interests at this point.
[00:15:20]  And this kind of funding bill is going to ensure that we're properly funded going forward.
[00:15:24]  We'll take out what Dan, he literally says it takes money to kill bad guys and we're going to refill our ammunition.
[00:15:36]  There's just times, man, like when you look at when you look at this Iran war and Trump or you listen to Pete Hegseth talk, you're like, I know that these guys are narcissists.
[00:15:47]  They have plans and schemes to get power.
[00:15:51]  They are manipulative and smart.
[00:15:53]  And their hungry ghost-like nature for power makes them smart in a way that it allows them to strategically conquer others.
[00:16:03]  Okay.
[00:16:04]  Like, I don't think you can just say, Donald Trump, what a stupid person.
[00:16:07]  Well, he's clearly conned the whole world his entire life.
[00:16:10]  He is smart in ways that are insidious.
[00:16:13]  Pete Hegseth, crafty, right?
[00:16:16]  And it doesn't mean that he's virtuous.
[00:16:19]  It doesn't mean that he's wise.
[00:16:20]  But you can't tell me that there's not ways that he hasn't found to conquer the world with no repercussions.
[00:16:27]  But there's other times when you listen to Hegseth say this, it takes money to kill bad guys, and we're refilling our ammunition.
[00:16:35]  Like it's a water, it's like my kid's water bottle or my gas tank.
[00:16:41]  Watching this clip, I was like, this is one of the stupidest moments to be alive ever.
[00:16:46]  And I want you to comment on that.
[00:16:48]  And then here's what Mother Jones, great piece, appreciate Tim Murphy, Jeremy Shulman, Yino.
[00:16:54]  Here's what 200 billion could get us.
[00:16:55]  You ready?
[00:16:56]  2.8 million public school teacher salaries.
[00:17:00]  Man, I would love it if we just sent 200 billion to public schools.
[00:17:06]  378 years of federal public broadcasting.
[00:17:10]  500 more White House ballrooms, Donald, if you're listening.
[00:17:13]  You can get a bunch more of those if you want it.
[00:17:16]  Four years of fully funded NIH, National Institutes of Health.
[00:17:23]  Let's see here.
[00:17:24]  16.9 TSA budgets.
[00:17:28]  200 years of free New York City buses.
[00:17:30]  How are we going to afford that?
[00:17:31]  Who knows?
[00:17:32]  247 consumer financial protection bureaus.
[00:17:37]  I know you're interested in this, Dan.
[00:17:39]  1.4 billion pairs of floorsheim shoes for men like Marco Rubio to wear.
[00:17:44]  Okay.
[00:17:45]  6.6 years of fully funded school lunches for every kid in America, not just kids who are underprivileged, but every kid, rich kids, billionaire kids, whoever.
[00:17:56]  Okay.
[00:17:57]  Three years of dental coverage as part of Medicare.
[00:18:04]  1.4 years worth of annual ACA subsidies.
[00:18:08]  90% of Americans roughly 220 billion in medical debt.
[00:18:14]  Those are all the things 200 billion could get us.
[00:18:18]  I sometimes think that we need to expand and not allow reductive analysis and narratives to take hold in our public sphere.
[00:18:25]  And then sometimes I think there's so much information and misinformation that we have to compress.
[00:18:29]  And I just want to compress something for everyone, Dan.
[00:18:33]  Donald Trump is stealing from you.
[00:18:35]  He is stealing your country.
[00:18:37]  I know that the Republicans and MAGA and Trump want you to think that immigrants and trans people and Muslims are stealing your country.
[00:18:47]  He is literally stealing your country.
[00:18:49]  And I'm not saying literally in the sense of like, you know, the character from Parks and Rec who doesn't know what literally means, Rob Lowe.
[00:18:57]  I mean, literally, they are taking your money.
[00:19:00]  They are taking your taxpayer money.
[00:19:03]  They are giving it to themselves and they are using it on wars to kill others.
[00:19:09]  Wars that have no purpose and make no sense.
[00:19:12]  They are stealing from you.
[00:19:13]  They are stealing your health.
[00:19:14]  They're stealing your education.
[00:19:16]  They are stealing your well-being.
[00:19:18]  They are stealing your safety.
[00:19:20]  They are stealing your way of life.
[00:19:24]  That is what they're doing.
[00:19:25]  They are stealing from you.
[00:19:27]  All right.
[00:19:28]  200 billion, Pete Hegseth.
[00:19:30]  Any thoughts on this stuff?
[00:19:32]  Yeah.
[00:19:32]  I mean, I don't think we've used this term for the Trump administration for a while, but it still holds.
[00:19:38]  And it's just nihilism.
[00:19:39]  Like, Hegseth revels in death.
[00:19:43]  He does, man.
[00:19:44]  He loves.
[00:19:45]  That's all it is.
[00:19:46]  Like, you listen, listen.
[00:19:47]  I mean, people can go and listen to everything he's ever said about the military.
[00:19:50]  So since he comes in, it's all lethality and killing.
[00:19:55]  And we're going to get rid of like the parts of the JAG Corps that aren't directly about basically giving legal cover for military operations and just sort of on and on and on and on.
[00:20:07]  It's just like lethality and killing and death and destruction.
[00:20:10]  And that's what the military is supposed to be.
[00:20:12]  Everything that's considered quote unquote woke for him that he wants out of the military.
[00:20:16]  It's basically like everything that is narrowly focused on killing people, right?
[00:20:19]  That's all the military is for him.
[00:20:21]  He's one of those people that like probably gets super upset that you have like Navy hospital ships that are sent on humanitarian missions, you know, and things like that.
[00:20:30]  Like that's, that's this guy.
[00:20:32]  And you pair that with Trump, for whom the military is just a bunch of toys.
[00:20:35]  It's just like, that's why he wants his parade on his birthday.
[00:20:38]  I just want to see the military go by because like, look at all of our planes and look at all of our jets.
[00:20:43]  And, you know, that's all it is.
[00:20:44]  It's toy soldiers to him.
[00:20:46]  It's not real lives, ours or anybody else's.
[00:20:49]  And so like all of that, that callous disregard, not just callous disregard for life, the celebration of death.
[00:20:55]  That's what I'm just going to say.
[00:20:56]  It's just the nihilism of this.
[00:20:59]  And to take that, that long list that people compile of like all the, let's call them the things that could be done to provide life, to provide flourishing, to make lives better for people.
[00:21:13]  Yeah.
[00:21:14]  I'm going to tie a few themes in here.
[00:21:16]  When we talk about the, you know, the culture of life language that the right likes to use.
[00:21:19]  No, there's a culture of death.
[00:21:21]  We want $200 billion to go blow more stuff up just so we can.
[00:21:25]  There's no, we've talked about it.
[00:21:26]  There's no reason for it.
[00:21:27]  There's no rationale that's given for it.
[00:21:29]  There's no end point to it.
[00:21:31]  Hegseth just wants to kill people and Trump just likes using the military and hiding from the Epstein files and the other things that this does for him.
[00:21:39]  And I think all of that just comes through in this kind of culture of death and nihilism that I think is at the heart of the Trump administration.
[00:21:48]  I agree.
[00:21:49]  I agree with you about Pete Hegseth.
[00:21:51]  I think for a lot of us, it's really hard to think ourselves into someone's shoes whose understanding of like what is good and exciting.
[00:22:04]  Because there's people in this world like Hegseth for whom death is actually exhilarating.
[00:22:10]  And I think for me, I'll just speak for myself.
[00:22:13]  I think a lot of people agree with me.
[00:22:15]  It's really hard to put myself in shoes where I'm like going to bed at night, where I'm like, you know what felt great today?
[00:22:21]  We just killed a lot of people.

=== Justifying Treatment as Demonic (15:07) ===

[00:22:22]  That was fun.
[00:22:23]  Had a good time.
[00:22:24]  Really excited about it.
[00:22:26]  Enjoyed watching the videos of it.
[00:22:28]  A really gory, morbid, disgusting destruction of flesh.
[00:22:33]  Just really into that.
[00:22:34]  Yeah, can't wait to do it again tomorrow.
[00:22:36]  Like, I just, it's really, you know, you ever feel alive, Dan?
[00:22:39]  You know, like, you ever feel just like you ever, you ever have moments where like something feels really good?
[00:22:44]  You go whitewater rafting or bungee jumping or you see an old friend or you run a marathon or you, Dan Miller's case, you bench press like 700 pounds or whatever it is.
[00:22:54]  You know, what I think you're saying about Hegseth is true and it's, it's actually really terrifying.
[00:22:58]  And we'll get into this in a minute about why it's really terrifying.
[00:23:02]  But anyway, I think that's right.
[00:23:04]  So we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk about Pete Hegseth's pastor.
[00:23:08]  Okay.
[00:23:09]  And this is a perfect segue, Dan.
[00:23:11]  It's like we planned it, you know, that Pete Hegseth really into death.
[00:23:16]  Well, Pete Hex as pastor, Brooks Pottiger this week was on a podcast where he and his podcast host talked about James Tellerico needing to die.
[00:23:27]  And maybe that would be what God wants.
[00:23:29]  We'll be right back.
[00:23:33]  This week, Brooks Pottager, Pete Hegset's pastor, the man who runs a church that Pete Hegseth moved his family to Tennessee in order to attend.
[00:23:43]  That guy went on Joshua Hames's podcast to talk about James Tallarico, the Senate candidate from Texas, who is an avowed Christian and is now an obsession of the American right of Christian nationalists because he has made Christianity his brand as a politician.
[00:24:02]  So here is Pottiger and Hames talking about James Tallarico and why God needs to kill him.
[00:24:09]  Public enemies, these are the orcs at the gate.
[00:24:12]  You are not.
[00:24:12]  Called to love the Barbarian horde that is planning to break into your city and you know pillage plunder, rape and mutilate you and your people.
[00:24:22]  You don't love that horde.
[00:24:23]  That is your enemy.
[00:24:24]  And you pray.
[00:24:25]  This is where you have in precatory psalms, this is where you pray strongly.
[00:24:29]  The psalmist is not shy.
[00:24:31]  God, destroy them, make them as dung on the ground, right so?
[00:24:34]  But Madison and I were talking about that, and so I say, even in the debate I think you might have seen it, but that I had on campus the other day I pray that God kills him.
[00:24:44]  Ultimately, that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ.
[00:24:49]  That's the first thing.
[00:24:50]  We want.
[00:24:50]  Him crucified with Christ.
[00:24:52]  That's exactly right.
[00:24:53]  I think Saul Of Tarsus of Tarsus yes, that's what I want.
[00:24:57]  Who would say I was holding the garments while they stoned Steven, and now i'm the.
[00:25:00]  Yeah, that that's what we want.
[00:25:02]  Yes, we want death and new life.
[00:25:04]  Right, and if it would not be within God's will to do so, stop him by any means necessary.
[00:25:09]  Oh God, Dan Pottager and Haines here basically say, we really want Godify him and kill him in christ.
[00:25:19]  So he'll be raised from the dead, he'll be born again okay, but then right at the end, there Hames is like but but, but if that doesn't happen, whatever go needs to do to stop him.
[00:25:31]  We hope that happens, okay.
[00:25:33]  And if you're like well Brad this, come on.
[00:25:35]  You're, you read into everything, you're just, this is there's no way.
[00:25:39]  He means that, come on.
[00:25:41]  Okay, let's just let me look on the.
[00:25:43]  The twitter machine here pulled up the Joshua Hames twitter machine.
[00:25:47]  December 31st 2024, in the year of our lord 2025, may go raise up a host of godly Christian men like Stonewall Jackson okay, great Stonewall Jackson.
[00:25:59]  He then followed this up with, you realize that God gave Moses the law that goes did not abolish slavery after the exodus.
[00:26:07]  The institution itself was not inherently sinful.
[00:26:10]  Let's play a clip dan, of him saying this very thing, one we covered a few months ago, the institution of slavery is not inherently evil.
[00:26:20]  I know some of you guys are upset by that.
[00:26:22]  Some of you guys are saying i've been saying that for years.
[00:26:25]  Okay, i'll take it a step further.
[00:26:27]  It is not inherently evil to own another human being.
[00:26:32]  I know, just wait, some of you guys are really upset, but let's talk through this, because it is very important that every Christian affirm what I just said, and not only should they affirm it.
[00:26:41]  Every Christian in today's society should be able to defend what I just said.
[00:26:45]  Okay, every Christian should be able to defend it.
[00:26:48]  Big EVA, big evangelicalism, has been getting this wrong for years, basically since the genesis, since the advent of BIG EVA.
[00:26:56]  They haven't had a good answer for the slavery issue.
[00:26:59]  Christians in America have been led astray on this topic.
[00:27:02]  They've been led to believe things that the Bible doesn't teach.
[00:27:06]  And when we go beyond the Bible, there are dire consequences.
[00:27:11]  He goes on to say, abortion is more wicked than slavery.
[00:27:14]  There were masters who truly loved their slaves and honored their humanity.
[00:27:18]  There are no babies who are thankful for being torn apart in their mother's room.
[00:27:22]  Whom, if you are pro-choice today, you would have almost certainly been pro-slavery in the 1860s.
[00:27:29]  We have reached a place where Pete Hegseth's pastor, a man with direct links to Doug Wilson, a man who has been assigned to lead a church, Brooks Pottiger, in the heart of Washington, D.C., where Pete Hegseth attends church.
[00:27:44]  So everybody stop.
[00:27:45]  This is not a fringe pastor.
[00:27:47]  This is not a guy with no following.
[00:27:49]  This is not a guy that I dug up to cover on this podcast so Dan and I could have some titillating material.
[00:27:58]  When Pete Hegseth goes to church Sunday, the guy that you just heard on the podcast is the man preaching.
[00:28:04]  Okay?
[00:28:06]  To me, this is a direct outcome of a certain kind of theology, but I'll shut up, Dan.
[00:28:11]  My initial reactions to this whole idea that James Tylerico should be crucified spiritually or physically if need, if needed.
[00:28:20]  Yeah, part of what he does, it's weird.
[00:28:23]  There's this kind of like back and forth in his rhetoric.
[00:28:28]  And I've been letting you people know I've been talking about, you know, Josh Hawley's book, and he does the same thing.
[00:28:33]  He's the kinder, gentler version, but the same kind of thing where like you start with something in the Bible that, you know, it's the whole like, we need to be more aggressive.
[00:28:42]  The Bible's not nice.
[00:28:43]  God isn't always nice like liberals think or, you know, whatever.
[00:28:47]  And so he cites what he calls the Imprecatory Psalms.
[00:28:49]  And for people who aren't familiar, the Psalms are these like songs, like poetry written in the Hebrew Bible.
[00:28:55]  And they cover all kinds of things, but some of them, some of them are really, really dark and very violent and like celebrating God, you know, casting down people's enemies and like punishing them and killing them in grotesque ways and killing their children, you know, killing their children and, you know, just really like pretty tough stuff to kind of square morally with a lot of other people's understanding of kind of what Christianity is about.
[00:29:21]  So he's citing the Imprecatory Psalms to do this whole like, God, you know, God celebrates or, you know, people celebrate the death of God's enemies.
[00:29:30]  And he says that Tallerico is the enemy at the gate.
[00:29:32]  The orcs at the gate has got some weird, you know, token stuff.
[00:29:35]  These guys love, they love Tolkien.
[00:29:38]  And the dehumanizing that comes with that and everything else, this howling horde of monsters at the gate.
[00:29:43]  But then like you get that little bit of a softening of it because you can just hear somebody be like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[00:29:49]  You're saying that we should kill him?
[00:29:50]  He's like, no, no, Spiritually kill him.
[00:29:56]  Should kill his heart.
[00:29:58]  You get this reference to Paul who says, I've been crucified with Christ.
[00:30:01]  And, you know, it's obviously a metaphor because Paul wasn't crucified.
[00:30:04]  You know, and so like they turn it into a metaphor to try to make it feel like maybe more spiritually acceptable.
[00:30:12]  So like they have this, the psalms that are like really violent.
[00:30:15]  And then they're like, oh, but we're making it a metaphor.
[00:30:17]  But then at the very end, he can't let it go.
[00:30:19]  Like he can't just let it go.
[00:30:22]  And Hames kind of tries you.
[00:30:23]  He's like sort of on his way out.
[00:30:24]  Like we're outroing here.
[00:30:26]  We're getting on our way out.
[00:30:28]  And he's like, yeah, but if it's not God's will, stop him by any means necessary.
[00:30:32]  They're just going to throw that out and be like, nah, I'm going to circle back around to the imprecatory Psalms.
[00:30:37]  That's where we're really at.
[00:30:38]  And so it's this weird kind of serpentine movement.
[00:30:42]  But I think it's the reason it stands out to me is I think it's typical of a lot of the ways that the right-wing Christians talk, where they'll say these things and then like you'll call them on it and they'll be like, what?
[00:30:54]  I'm just talking like spiritually.
[00:30:56]  What's your problem?
[00:30:57]  Like, gee, you know, but if the spiritual part works, like, and kind of this back and forth.
[00:31:02]  And I don't know if any of that is making sense because it's very, very slippery and hard to kneel down.
[00:31:07]  But I think it's a really defining feature of a way a lot of those folks on the right talk, and especially when they're citing the Christian stuff, when they want to have enough wiggle room to say that they're being good Christians and they're talking about spiritual things, but they're really just advocating violence and political assassination.
[00:31:24]  It's basically what he calls for at the end of that.
[00:31:27]  If you think that this is isolated, it's not.
[00:31:30]  So here is a direct quote: Worship is warfare.
[00:31:33]  That's Jared Longshore, the executive pastor of Christkirch, Doug Wilson's Church in Idaho.
[00:31:38]  And he said this from the pulpit of their church plant in Washington, D.C., likely with Pete Hegseth in attendance, because that is where Pete Hegseth goes to church every Sunday.
[00:31:49]  So worship is warfare, he says.
[00:31:52]  Now, why, you know, why is this a big deal to me?
[00:31:55]  It's a big deal to me for a number of reasons, but I agree with everything you just said.
[00:32:00]  There's this wink, wink, nod, nod.
[00:32:01]  It's like when the fascist is like, oh, I was just kidding.
[00:32:05]  I was just joking.
[00:32:05]  It was a joke.
[00:32:06]  Trump was joking.
[00:32:08]  No, no, no, no.
[00:32:08]  Elon didn't really give a Nazi salute.
[00:32:10]  God, you guys are ridiculous.
[00:32:11]  You guys have no sense of humor.
[00:32:13]  Okay.
[00:32:14]  But just like you hit on something, Dan, I think it's such a through line for today.
[00:32:18]  It's like Hegseth likes violence and death.
[00:32:21]  Okay.
[00:32:22]  And there's a sense among this crowd of Christian nationalists that just loves violence.
[00:32:29]  Doug Wilson talks about violence as sacred.
[00:32:33]  It's like a man's duty to engage in what he calls sacred violence.
[00:32:38]  One of the things that I've maintained for a long time is that, and so is Matthew Taylor.
[00:32:43]  If you listen to Matt Taylor's Charismatic Revival Fury, if you read his book, read any of his work, he's really great on this.
[00:32:49]  When you emphasize spiritual warfare over and over and over again, oh, this is demonic.
[00:32:55]  Oh, that's demonic.
[00:32:56]  Oh, that's a spiritual assault.
[00:32:59]  That's spiritual battle.
[00:33:02]  There's demons.
[00:33:02]  There's enemies of God.
[00:33:04]  There's bad spirits here.
[00:33:05]  And these guys talk about that all the time.
[00:33:08]  Everybody in the Doug Wilson universe, along with the New Apostolic Reformation universe, is very into spiritual warfare.
[00:33:14]  We have to pray out the demons.
[00:33:17]  C.J. Engel, one of the other guys who's in this universe, talks about how Halloween lit, like he, he's, he's, he's dead serious.
[00:33:25]  He's like, Halloween literally unleashes demons on the earth because so many people like dress up and engage in scary costumes.
[00:33:34]  And I mean, I have no idea what he would say, Dan, if he saw a picture of you going to one of your metal concerts.
[00:33:39]  Man, who knows what he would talk about there?
[00:33:42]  Because they really think and advocate for this idea that we are always in warfare.
[00:33:50]  One of the, I mean, the spiritual head of patriarch, the progenitor of this tradition, R.J. Rushdooney, said that he thinks that thinking, theology is warfare.
[00:34:04]  Either human thought recognizes God's sovereignty or it does not.
[00:34:07]  And that's Michael McVicker, his biographer, writing about R.J. Rushdooney.
[00:34:12]  Here's my point.
[00:34:12]  I think it's a point we've made on this show a bunch of times, but I think it's worth making again today.
[00:34:16]  When you talk about your political or cultural nemeses as demonic, when you treat them as orcs, when you treat them as like enemies of God who have spiritually possessed by different demons, you are really, really, really at the eraser's edge of advocating for them being hurt or killed in actual warfare.
[00:34:45]  Like you're just one step away.
[00:34:47]  Okay.
[00:34:48]  So if you listen to the Christian nationalists, you will hear Erica Kirk talk about things that are demonic.
[00:34:54]  Oh, that's such a demonic thing.
[00:34:56]  She'll talk about that with people on the American left.
[00:35:00]  I saw an interview with Candace Cameron Burr.
[00:35:03]  This is really sad, Dan.
[00:35:04]  Do you know how sad my life is?
[00:35:06]  This is my algorithm.
[00:35:07]  Candace Cameron Burr is like the Christian actor, like the daughter, daughter, the sister of Kirk Cameron, you know, growing pains.
[00:35:14]  Anyway, they're like very Christian.
[00:35:16]  And she went on a podcast recently and like told the host, oh yeah, my husband and I got tricked into going to an S ⁇ M party.
[00:35:27]  Sure you did.
[00:35:29]  I love this story so much.
[00:35:30]  It's like, oh, Josie called and said she wanted to go get a shake shack.
[00:35:34]  You know, we ended up in a dungeon.
[00:35:37]  Orgies everywhere.
[00:35:38]  It was just not what I really planned for our Thursday.
[00:35:42]  But she says in this like interview, oh, I went down to this like dungeon and there were people doing things and it was just demonic.
[00:35:50]  Okay.
[00:35:51]  And don't get me wrong.
[00:35:52]  I have no idea what she saw.
[00:35:53]  I hope no one was being abused or being hurt in ways that they blah, But when you talk about people as demonic, you're justifying treating them not as human.
[00:36:04]  Let me say that again.
[00:36:05]  You're right.
[00:36:07]  When you say somebody is demonic, you're justifying treating them as not human.
[00:36:12]  And if you don't have to treat them as human, then you can say, well, it's okay if they get hurt or killed or maimed.
[00:36:19]  As Pete Excess is like, give me $200 billion.
[00:36:21]  I just want to kill as many people as I can because that's what God wants.
[00:36:25]  And in this case with Tallarico, like these guys are like, well, he's an enemy.
[00:36:31]  He's God's enemy.
[00:36:33]  He's clearly God's enemy.
[00:36:35]  So we hope that he spiritually dies and crucified and is born again.
[00:36:40]  But if that doesn't happen, well, we'll see.
[00:36:42]  Maybe God has to stop him another way.
[00:36:44]  Who else does that apply to, Josh Hames?
[00:36:46]  Who else does that apply to?
[00:36:47]  Does that apply to every immigrant trying to cross the border?
[00:36:51]  Every person who's fleeing violence in their home country, who is trying to get asylum?
[00:36:56]  Every refugee who has to leave a place because the U.S. was involved in a war there and made their life insecure?
[00:37:05]  Who else?
[00:37:06]  Is that every person who advocates for abortion or gets an abortion?
[00:37:10]  Is that every person who doesn't worship your God in the way you want?
[00:37:13]  Tallerico is a Christian and you still want this to happen to him.
[00:37:16]  What about Mamdani?
[00:37:18]  What about Buddhists, Hindus?
[00:37:20]  What about people who don't worship any God?
[00:37:24]  Like this rhetoric leads there.
[00:37:26]  It goes from, oh, yeah, maybe God needs to stop him.

=== Biblical Metaphors for Violence (04:06) ===

[00:37:30]  Wink, wink, and clever mustache guy on a podcast.
[00:37:34]  And then it goes to, like, if you see Josh Hames, he looks like a hipster from 2012.
[00:37:40]  You know, like the, it's like he, like, you know that his closet has like a suspender corner.
[00:37:45]  Like there's like, it's not, he doesn't have.
[00:37:47]  There's no way he's not wearing pattern socks.
[00:37:49]  I was just going to say, no, yeah, there's pattern socks and then there's definitely a whole section of the closet for the suspenders.
[00:37:55]  It's not just he has a pair.
[00:37:57]  It's like, okay.
[00:37:59]  He only drinks out of like mason jars.
[00:38:02]  Anyway, it's okay.
[00:38:03]  Whatever.
[00:38:05]  Oh, the memories, Brad.
[00:38:07]  The memories.
[00:38:09]  I only drink Moscow mules and I only drink them out of mason jars.
[00:38:13]  Okay.
[00:38:17]  This rhetoric goes from, oh, yeah, maybe God needs to stop Tallarico, wink, wink, to, oh, maybe God needs to stop Muslims and Jews, atheists, people, women who get abortions, refugees, everyone who's against God's chosen people, all the orcs at the gate.
[00:38:37]  Anyway, Dan, further thoughts on this?
[00:38:39]  Well, just so if you if you come further down, so you've got, let's call like the leading lights or the main figures in this, and they talk about the spiritual warfare and so forth.
[00:38:50]  And I can hear somebody saying, okay, I get it.
[00:38:54]  I hear it.
[00:38:54]  They talk about that.
[00:38:55]  It's scary.
[00:38:56]  It's bad, whatever.
[00:38:57]  But not everybody out in the audience actually takes it that way or not every church that talks about spiritual warfare as being this kind of militant or kind of literalistic about it or whatever.
[00:39:09]  And I've talked to my brother-in-law who uses this language and I've said, you know, do you really think this?
[00:39:14]  He's like, you know, it's at the end of the day, it's a metaphor.
[00:39:16]  It's a way of speaking.
[00:39:17]  Of course, I don't hate people.
[00:39:20]  Of course, I don't want to exercise violence against them and so forth.
[00:39:23]  And you'll hear that kind of thing, that kind of dismissal of it of, you know, it's just a figure of speech or it's just, you know, I'm just using biblical language or I'm just, you know, whatever.
[00:39:34]  And the trick, the, the trick that's always there is, okay, but like, even if you do that, why that metaphor?
[00:39:40]  Like, why that metaphor?
[00:39:42]  Why not, I don't know, some other way of viewing the people that you disagree with?
[00:39:48]  I don't know.
[00:39:48]  We don't call them our debate opponents.
[00:39:51]  We don't call them the competitors on the opposing team, you know, or something like that.
[00:39:55]  You know, I'm a football fan and like teams can really hate each other.
[00:39:59]  They don't usually call each other demons or orcs or like whatever.
[00:40:02]  They recognize that, you know, they're the opponent, but they don't like have to hate them or dehumanize them or maybe they want, you know, whatever.
[00:40:12]  You get the point.
[00:40:14]  I think it's really significant because, again, it's easy, I think, for people to take the critique that you're making and that I completely agree with of the people who use this language and kind of box it off and say, well, yeah, those people are extremists, though.
[00:40:30]  But the Bible uses the language of spiritual warfare and regular people do that.
[00:40:34]  They're not saying that.
[00:40:36]  They're just using a biblical metaphor that helps them express something spiritual or something.
[00:40:41]  And that's my point is that the metaphor still matters.
[00:40:43]  You're still like, okay, so why that metaphor?
[00:40:46]  Why that image?
[00:40:48]  Why not something else?
[00:40:49]  And if some, next time somebody comes to me, like I just, I don't know how many times in my life I've heard the fact that it's in the Bible as a justification for the metaphor.
[00:40:56]  Yeah, but it's in the Bible.
[00:40:58]  Cool, to start reading a different book.
[00:40:59]  Like find a different metaphor.
[00:41:01]  Like do something else.
[00:41:03]  Like the metaphor sucks unless you want to revel in violence and dehumanize people and legitimize their death and their destruction and make that a part of your spiritual vision, which is exactly what these folks want to do.
[00:41:18]  Well, I want to bring in something that may feel like it's going afield, but I actually think it's directly related to this theme today of we are led right now by men who revel in violence, not in democratic dialogue, not in negotiation, not in working together, not in trying to help when they can.

=== Mark Wayne Mullen Quotes (02:22) ===

[00:41:36]  Rand Paul went directly at Mark Wayne Mullen in his Senate confirmation hearing this week about the fact that Mark Wayne Mullen challenged people to violence in the Senate chamber, which we've talked about already on this show.
[00:41:51]  But Mark Wayne Mullen also talked about how when Rand Paul was like hurt and beat up, supposedly by his neighbor, that Mark Wayne Mullen said it was great.
[00:42:00]  And, you know, he laughed.
[00:42:01]  He basically laughed at Rand Paul and made fun of him.
[00:42:05]  And Rand Paul was like, I'm sitting right here.
[00:42:07]  Say it to my face.
[00:42:09]  And Mark Wayne Mullen was like, oh, this is character assassination.
[00:42:12]  And Rand Paul's like, I'm just reading your words.
[00:42:15]  What are you talking about?
[00:42:16]  But what's the point of that?
[00:42:18]  Rand Paul's comments on Mark Wayne Mullen as the leader of DHS are like, we cannot have a man leading ICE agents who thinks that there is no check on violence.
[00:42:28]  How can you ask ICE agents to act appropriately with people?
[00:42:31]  How can you ask law enforcement to not use excessive force, to not shoot people in their car through a window when you have the man in charge of DHS who is challenging people to fights in the Senate chamber?
[00:42:43]  There's no way for us to have a functioning law enforcement with the, but this is who's in charge.
[00:42:48]  Pete Hegseth takes money to kill bad guys.
[00:42:51]  His pastor goes on a podcast where the host is like, we might need to, James Tallarico might need to die.
[00:42:58]  Kash Patel is like, there's a historic opportunity for our FBI to be trained by UFC fighters.
[00:43:04]  Okay, yeah, that's, ah, yeah, yeah.
[00:43:07]  Okay?
[00:43:08]  Like, this is who we are led by.
[00:43:11]  They're stealing from you, and they have no interest in anything, but if you disagree with them, violence is the answer.
[00:43:18]  That is where we are at this moment.
[00:43:21]  I just want to make sure we all see that and understand that.
[00:43:25]  This is a pattern.
[00:43:27]  Mark Wayne Mullen, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, Kash Patel.
[00:43:32]  Like, this is what this administration wants to do.
[00:43:36]  So, all right.
[00:43:37]  Let me give you just a couple more quotes.
[00:43:39]  I just want to drive home this point, and then I'll leave it alone.
[00:43:43]  Andrew Isker, also part of this whole kind of Theo bro, says, you must learn what to hate.
[00:43:48]  That's a direct quote.
[00:43:49]  Joel Webbin, another part of the Doug Wilson universe, Josh Hames universe, they hang out together.
[00:43:55]  I want Christians to have power, and with that power, I want it to be wielded righteously.

=== Pantheistic God Descriptions (04:08) ===

[00:43:59]  What does that mean?
[00:43:59]  It means crushing our enemies and rewarding our friends.
[00:44:03]  C.J. Engel also hangs out with them.
[00:44:05]  This just goes back to the whole Jewish question with Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson.
[00:44:10]  The Jews as a collective have largely operated at odds with the old American way of life, rooted as it is in European Christendom.
[00:44:16]  European Christendom, meaning the way of life where Muslims and Jews and infidels and barbarians were seen as an enemy that needed to be approached with violence.
[00:44:26]  That's where we are.
[00:44:27]  Okay.
[00:44:29]  Let's take a break.
[00:44:30]  We'll come back and talk about the Christian nationalism piece at the Atlantic that I talked about earlier this week.
[00:44:36]  We'll let Dan chime in and really reflect on why it matters.
[00:44:40]  Be right back.
[00:44:42]  All right, Dan, can I throw something at you that we did not prepare for?
[00:44:48]  Yes.
[00:44:49]  And I just throw away.
[00:44:50]  Throw away, bro.
[00:44:51]  I got to get it out of my system.
[00:44:53]  One of the things that the American right is obsessed about right now is a quote from James Tallarico where he said, God is non-binary.
[00:45:02]  Okay.
[00:45:04]  And I just want everyone out there to have the tools to respond to that at the barbecue this weekend.
[00:45:08]  So when somebody's like, well, James Tallarico says God's non-binary.
[00:45:13]  Come on, bro.
[00:45:14]  I want you to look that person in the face and say, please describe for me God's penis.
[00:45:21]  I want to, can you draw God's penis?
[00:45:23]  If you can draw that for me or describe it, I would really, really appreciate that.
[00:45:27]  And when they're like, come on, man, quit being gross.
[00:45:29]  That's God you're talking about.
[00:45:31]  Then ask them, what is a man?
[00:45:34]  And say, well, a man has an X and Y chromosome.
[00:45:37]  Okay, does God the Father have that?
[00:45:39]  No, yes or no.
[00:45:41]  Okay.
[00:45:42]  Do men have a penis?
[00:45:45]  They do?
[00:45:46]  Then show me in the Bible where God's penis is described or please draw it for me because I'd love to understand how God's penis works.
[00:45:55]  There are descriptions of God's face.
[00:45:57]  There are descriptions of God's hands in Exodus, but there's not descriptions of God's penis.
[00:46:05]  So are those metaphors or not?
[00:46:07]  I mean, how come his hands are described in his head?
[00:46:10]  I mean, are you saying God's a man with no penis?
[00:46:12]  That's weird.
[00:46:14]  Because I've looked in the Bible, have found no descriptions of the penis.
[00:46:17]  Can anyone either show me that or just tell me that God is a man with no penis, which sounds like not a man?
[00:46:24]  Not a real man, as you would describe it.
[00:46:26]  Or maybe we just need to get away from the fact that God is male and this whole thing.
[00:46:30]  What do y'all think, man?
[00:46:31]  Like, either God has penis and you can't find it.
[00:46:34]  God has no penis, not a real man, or this whole thing is silly and you're just an insecure little masculine baby who can't deal with the idea that maybe the divine gender doesn't align with yours.
[00:46:47]  Okay, I got it out, Dan.
[00:46:48]  If you want to respond, go ahead.
[00:46:50]  Otherwise, let's just take a moment in brief reflection and quiet time and reset.
[00:46:54]  What do you, you know, what do you want to do?
[00:46:56]  I mean, you can go that direction.
[00:46:58]  You can also go, I mean, even with the other, the other language, God's hands, you're like, well, God is everywhere.
[00:47:03]  Yeah.
[00:47:04]  God's doing things everywhere all the time.
[00:47:07]  Everything that happens happens.
[00:47:08]  So like, how many hands does God have?
[00:47:10]  Like, how, how anthropomorphic do we even want to make God?
[00:47:14]  Do they not end?
[00:47:15]  Like, are they infinite hands?
[00:47:17]  Yeah.
[00:47:17]  What kind of hand?
[00:47:18]  Can hands be infinite?
[00:47:19]  Yeah.
[00:47:20]  Kind of person, quote unquote, is God if God is, you know, you're going to have this humanoid description of God, then I don't know, Brad.
[00:47:28]  I can't, I can't do everything with my hands.
[00:47:30]  I only have two.
[00:47:31]  I don't know how many humans typically have, like, as you're saying, an infinite number of hands to be, you know, omnipresent doing things everywhere.
[00:47:39]  If that's true, then I don't know how many penises God has to have to like, you know, be symmetrical and so forth.
[00:47:44]  The point is, it's absolutely absurd.
[00:47:46]  And that's the point.
[00:47:48]  Is people get so worked up on these things, but if you probe it just a little, they're like, oh, I don't know.
[00:47:56]  And then they'll be like, well, I don't know about all of that, but and then they'll just, you know, default to whatever their standard position is.
[00:48:02]  Are God's hands everywhere?
[00:48:04]  Yes or no?
[00:48:05]  Yes.
[00:48:05]  So God's hands are everywhere.

=== Christian Nationalism Fallacies (15:39) ===

[00:48:07]  Okay.
[00:48:07]  Start sounding like a Hindu deity, Brad.
[00:48:10]  Starts.
[00:48:11]  Yeah, that's true.
[00:48:12]  This is getting.
[00:48:15]  This is getting pantheistic now.
[00:48:17]  Do you just say pansexual?
[00:48:19]  I don't think so, dude.
[00:48:20]  Nope, it's not what I said, Jimmy.
[00:48:21]  All right.
[00:48:22]  Calm it down, James.
[00:48:24]  Are God's hands everywhere?
[00:48:26]  Yes or no?
[00:48:27]  Yes.
[00:48:27]  Great.
[00:48:28]  Is his penis everywhere?
[00:48:29]  Is God's penis here right now?
[00:48:30]  Can you show me where it is?
[00:48:32]  Is it guiding our meal?
[00:48:34]  Is it leading this prayer time?
[00:48:35]  I just want to know what is involved.
[00:48:38]  What parts of God's body are involved in the prayer time today, Jimmy?
[00:48:41]  His hands, his heart, his head, his testicles, his anus.
[00:48:45]  I'm just trying to figure it out, please.
[00:48:48]  Okay.
[00:48:48]  I just want to know.
[00:48:50]  The rectum, is that somewhere?
[00:48:51]  Okay.
[00:48:52]  All right.
[00:48:52]  I'm done, Dan.
[00:48:53]  I'm sorry.
[00:48:53]  Remember that whole seminary class on God's anus?
[00:48:56]  I do.
[00:48:56]  Wait, I don't.
[00:48:57]  I don't.
[00:48:57]  I don't either.
[00:48:58]  Never mind.
[00:48:59]  Never mind.
[00:49:00]  That's what we were supposed to talk about.
[00:49:02]  That's okay.
[00:49:04]  At the Atlantic, 10, 12 days ago, Heath Carter wrote a piece about Christian nationalism, and it was about how people should, Americans should stop using the term Christian nationalism.
[00:49:14]  I did a whole episode about this earlier this week.
[00:49:16]  I've heard from a lot of people about that episode.
[00:49:18]  It stirred up a lot of interest.
[00:49:20]  I want to recognize from the start, Heath Carter is an American historian, has done a lot of great work in the field.
[00:49:26]  This is not a chance for us to make fun of Heath Carter, to personally attack Heath Carter.
[00:49:31]  I have no interest in that.
[00:49:32]  I don't know Heath Carter.
[00:49:33]  I've never met him.
[00:49:34]  I have interacted with him, you know, at times on social media and other ways professionally.
[00:49:39]  I'm not here to talk about Heath Carter in a personally denigrating manner.
[00:49:44]  This is a purely intellectual sort of situation where I highly and vehemently disagree with what he wrote, but I want to give you, Dan, a chance to chime in.
[00:49:53]  So I'll summarize the piece and then you take it away.
[00:49:56]  Basically says that James Tylerico and others from American history are also Christian nationalists because they dream of a more Christian nation and they are Christians who want power.
[00:50:07]  There are suggestions in the piece that people like Frederick Douglass or Walter Rauschenbusch or any Christian who wants to build a society that more resembles what they would take to be a Christian society are also Christian nationalists.
[00:50:20]  Therefore, Christian nationalism as a label does not make any sense and everyone should stop using it.
[00:50:25]  To me, there are lines in the piece that are somewhat mocking of Tallarico, as like he says that it verges on irony that Tallarico is still against Christian nationalism when he's a Christian who wants to have power as a senator.
[00:50:39]  I have said my piece about this.
[00:50:40]  I have way more thoughts, but I'll defer.
[00:50:43]  You take it away.
[00:50:44]  What did you think of this and what were your issues with the piece?
[00:50:46]  Or maybe you loved it and you have no issue.
[00:50:48]  I don't know.
[00:50:49]  I want to reiterate what you said, that this is not any kind of criticism against Carter as a person.
[00:50:55]  I don't think I've ever met Heath Carter or engaged.
[00:50:58]  But I think it's a really problematic thesis.
[00:51:01]  So I think there's a few sort of fallacies that are going on here.
[00:51:05]  And I think I just wrote, as you were saying this, I didn't even have this in my notes, but I just sort of noted this, that it'd be interesting to hear a definition of what he thinks nationalism is, like just nationalism.
[00:51:17]  Because everybody who runs for political office is not a nationalist.
[00:51:21]  Desiring to hold a political office does not make you a nationalist.
[00:51:25]  Like you need more than just that.
[00:51:27]  So just being like, oh, a person is a Christian and wants political power, ergo, they're a Christian nationalist.
[00:51:33]  That doesn't, it doesn't fly.
[00:51:35]  But I think another part of the thesis, I think, is just this sense that, and he's not unique in this.
[00:51:42]  And what's interesting and for me, problematic, and I suspect maybe for him problematic.
[00:51:47]  I don't know, is that the logic that he uses here is the same in some ways as some of the super right wing, and I'm going to say Christian nationalists, where they'll come along and say, well, Christian nationalism isn't a thing.
[00:51:59]  It's just you're just trying to tell people that they shouldn't bring their faith into the public sphere.
[00:52:04]  And if they do, you denigrate them, you bunch of secularist elites and so forth.
[00:52:08]  And you're just trying to mock people or keep people out of the public sphere if they vote their conscience or bring their Christian morality or whatever it is.
[00:52:19]  Ali Beth Stuckey says that and lots of other people say that.
[00:52:23]  People like Charlie Kirk said that, you know, and Carter kind of says the same thing.
[00:52:29]  And I think it just doesn't, it doesn't line up.
[00:52:31]  He also does this thing that's sort of interesting where he's like sort of saying like, basically, I guess every committed Christian in American history who engaged in politics or social activism out of their Christian identity is somehow a Christian nationalist.
[00:52:47]  I think that's the claim.
[00:52:49]  And I just think it's far too big a concept of Christian nationalism.
[00:52:53]  I think that's the concept that doesn't then have any bounds or have any coherence at all.
[00:52:58]  He also seems to oppose qualifiers.
[00:53:00]  Like he'll talk about how on some measures, and this is true on some like survey data that you could get of like beliefs that people might have about America and its Christian heritage or whatever, lots of African-American Christians will answer some of the same things that like lots of white Christians will do.
[00:53:17]  And then he'll, you know, and he'll do things that I would do and say, well, okay, let's talk about white Christian nationalism then.
[00:53:24]  Except he dismisses that.
[00:53:25]  He's like, well, that's just adding a qualifier or whatever.
[00:53:27]  But I'm like, okay, you know your American religious history.
[00:53:32]  The bifurcation of white Christianity and black Christianity in this country goes all the way back to like before the founding.
[00:53:40]  It's a fundamental defining feature of American Christianity is how it has been racialized literally since the origins of the nation.
[00:53:50]  So yeah, if you want to distinguish it and say, okay, contemporary white Christian nationalism, or I just did it with contemporary, I've got no problem with like the qualifications.
[00:53:59]  So he does that weird thing that sometimes people do where they're like, well, you can't use the term Christian nationalist.
[00:54:03]  It's too big.
[00:54:04]  And you're like, okay, well, okay.
[00:54:06]  How about like contemporary white Christian nationalism?
[00:54:08]  Oh, well, why are you qualifying it?
[00:54:10]  I'm like, well, I'm qualifying it because you just said that like there could be other forms of Christian nationalism and that I should be aware of that.
[00:54:17]  So there's that sort of move.
[00:54:19]  But then what he highlights are some other things that I think just historically don't do the work he needs them to do.
[00:54:25]  And this gets back around to that question of concepts like nationalism, populism, and so forth.
[00:54:32]  So he talks about, you know, what were known as the people that advocated the social gospel.
[00:54:37]  This is like, say, late 19th century, into the early 20th century.
[00:54:40]  I know you've talked about this and others have talked about this.
[00:54:43]  That, you know, they supported things to help the poor and to alleviate poverty.
[00:54:48]  Many of them were sort of anti-capitalist.
[00:54:50]  They were more socialistic or social democratic in their economic thinking and so forth.
[00:54:55]  He notes what was called the Federal Council of Churches and how they supported the New Deal and the things that came through out of this and so forth.
[00:55:02]  And basically he says essentially that these were sort of more politically left Christian nationalists.
[00:55:07]  And I disagree with him.
[00:55:08]  And here's why.
[00:55:09]  Number one, the Federal Council of Churches and its later pro, you know, its later ancestor, the National Council of Churches, those, what were known as modernists, what would now be known as liberal Protestants, they were much more ecumenical.
[00:55:25]  They were willing to work with Jewish Americans.
[00:55:27]  They were willing to work with like progressives who were not Christian or who didn't identify as Christian.
[00:55:32]  They were very sort of eclectic in their alliances.
[00:55:36]  They were not defined by a narrow Christian identity.
[00:55:40]  And so if somebody says part of what makes Christian nationalism Christian nationalism, that's going to be a piece of it for me.
[00:55:44]  You're not a real American if you're not Christian.
[00:55:47]  That was absolutely not the position that they were advocating.
[00:55:51]  And many of them were explicit that God didn't have a nation.
[00:55:55]  God didn't play favorites with nations.
[00:55:57]  That the kingdom of God, as they envisioned it, was transnational, that it transcended all forms of nations.
[00:56:05]  And so like, how do you have a nationalism that's a transnationalism that says there's no such thing as nation?
[00:56:12]  God doesn't play favorites with nations.
[00:56:14]  At the same time, Christian conservatives at the time opposed the Federal Council of Churches.
[00:56:18]  Why?
[00:56:18]  For exactly that reason.
[00:56:19]  They were too open.
[00:56:20]  They were too ecumenical.
[00:56:22]  They felt they were giving up their Christian identity.
[00:56:23]  It's the same reason why conservative Catholics and conservative Protestants who drive white Christian nationalism at present have always hated the National Council of Churches.
[00:56:33]  They say it's not Christian enough.
[00:56:35]  Excuse me.
[00:56:37]  They say it's not Christian enough.
[00:56:38]  It doesn't maintain its Christian identity.
[00:56:40]  It's too broad and so forth.
[00:56:42]  So I think all of those things just like undermine this notion that everybody who acts out of Christian values in the public sphere is somehow a Christian nationalist, partly because I think it is different to say, I as a Christian have a vision of what a good and just society would be, and I'm going to try to make my society look like that.
[00:57:03]  And saying this is a nation or a society that God has chosen and only Christians can be part of it.
[00:57:09]  And then you get the nationalist populist piece of it.
[00:57:12]  And I think that there's a difference between populism, which I've talked about a lot, is about exclusively defining who the real people are, and it's about excluding and marginalizing others, and a form of popular Christianity, which these were, that were about expanding the services of the government.
[00:57:29]  They were about expanding and helping those.
[00:57:32]  Yeah, they would have said it's our Christian vision.
[00:57:33]  We're going to serve the least of these and the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden, but absolutely not in a nationalistic or populistic way, the contemporary Christian nationalism.
[00:57:43]  So I think it's a real distinction.
[00:57:44]  I think it's an overbroad thesis to say that all Christians who are engaged in politics are Christian nationalists.
[00:57:51]  And yeah.
[00:57:54]  Here's why this got under my skin so much is that, and I don't think Heath Carter intended this, but I do think it is happening, is Allie Bethstucke, William Wolf, vehement Christian nationalists on the right, are using this tactic.
[00:58:12]  Hey, James Tyler Rico is just a Christian nationalist, but on the left, he's more Christian nationalist than us.
[00:58:18]  But nobody calls him that because liberal media.
[00:58:22]  And I think when you read Carter's piece here, you basically get the same sentiment, and it's really not helpful in the current setting.
[00:58:31]  I'm not saying Heath Carter meant to do that, and I'm not saying has any sympathy for those people.
[00:58:37]  I'm just saying that's what happened here.
[00:58:39]  Here's why I can pick this apart.
[00:58:42]  I got three more hours, and my wife will tell you that I just, you know, once my blood gets going, it takes me a while to come down.
[00:58:50]  But here's what really matters at the end of our episode today: James Tylerico is a Christian who does not believe a couple of things.
[00:58:57]  You ready?
[00:58:58]  Here's a couple of things I do not think he believes.
[00:58:59]  I can't speak for him, but examining so much of his statements, here's what I have taken away.
[00:59:03]  He does not think you need to be a Christian to be a real American.
[00:59:07]  He does not think you need to be a Christian to be a good person.
[00:59:10]  And he does not think that there should be a distinction in the ways that Christians love, care for, treat others, depending on if they are a Christian or not.
[00:59:19]  Meaning, if you elect him as senator or state rep, he does not think you need to be a good person to be a Christian, a Christian to be a real American, and he's not going to treat you differently because you're not a Christian.
[00:59:30]  That is the exact opposite of all the other Christian nationalists we've talked about today.
[00:59:35]  They say, if you're not a Christian, you can't be a good person.
[00:59:37]  You can't be a real American.
[00:59:39]  And we might need to punish you or you might need to die, according to what we talked about earlier.
[00:59:45]  The Democrats cannot win.
[00:59:48]  And I know some of you are atheists and agnostic and humanists out there.
[00:59:51]  And I just, I hope you'll hear me for a minute.
[00:59:53]  We have too many Christians in this country.
[00:59:56]  Just de facto, I'm just describing.
[00:59:58]  We have so many Christians in this country.
[01:00:00]  The Democratic Party cannot win unless it appeals to people of faith.
[01:00:05]  I'm sorry.
[01:00:05]  Doug Padgett came on the show and we disagreed on some stuff, but I think Doug is absolutely right about that.
[01:00:10]  The Democrats don't have religious groups at their convention.
[01:00:13]  They don't have booths.
[01:00:14]  If you go to the RNC, they're everywhere.
[01:00:17]  I would argue James Tyler Rico is the only national profile Democrat in decades whose brand is Christianity.
[01:00:24]  Dan, I don't know if you agree with that, but like, I'm not saying he's the only Christian.
[01:00:29]  So don't, don't, don't email me, okay?
[01:00:32]  Don't.
[01:00:32]  I will not answer that email.
[01:00:34]  Joe Biden, Christian.
[01:00:36]  Pete Buttigich, Christian, okay?
[01:00:39]  Like, Raflai Awardnock, Christian.
[01:00:42]  All Christians, yes.
[01:00:43]  Their brand is not Christianity.
[01:00:44]  Their brand is something else.
[01:00:46]  Tyler Rico's different because that's his brand.
[01:00:49]  And you might be like, well, I'm a humanist.
[01:00:51]  I'm an atheist.
[01:00:51]  I don't want to vote for a Christian.
[01:00:52]  And it's like, okay, then what are we doing?
[01:00:55]  This is a democracy.
[01:00:57]  I have a really complicated history with Christianity.
[01:01:01]  I want to vote for people who think that we can work together to create human flourishing.
[01:01:06]  I want to vote for atheists, agnostics, humanists.
[01:01:08]  I want to vote for Hindus and Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians.
[01:01:10]  That's what it means to live here.
[01:01:12]  So if we're not going to do that, then I don't know what we're doing.
[01:01:15]  And if this is the guy that's running on this kind of ticket and he's able to do something, Dan, I think you and I can sympathize with so much, which is use theological language to destroy the arguments of his Christian opponents.
[01:01:32]  Like Biden rarely takes on other Christians using theology.
[01:01:35]  Buttigig, he's really good rhetorically, but it's usually about like transportation or budgets.
[01:01:40]  When Tylerico speaks, he's like, here's why from a Christian theological perspective, posting the Ten Commandments on the classroom wall is un-Christian.
[01:01:48]  And it's really hard to argue with him because he's so theologically astute.
[01:01:52]  We haven't seen that in forever, Dan.
[01:01:55]  Right?
[01:01:56]  So when Heath Carter published this, I was like, this doesn't help.
[01:01:59]  And one of the things that I think folks outside of the Northeast Ivy League bubble need to realize is like when the Atlantic is seen as like a sweater vest bow tie magazine by most people.
[01:02:12]  Princeton is seen as a sweater vest bowtie university filled with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
[01:02:18]  So when you write stuff like this, it feels like you're looking down on the rest of us as like the hoi polloy masses who are trying to do like what we can with what we've got.
[01:02:28]  And Tallarico is not Mr. Dead Handsome rolled up my sleeves Bedo.
[01:02:33]  You know, he's not dripping with sex appeal, Betto.
[01:02:35]  I don't know.
[01:02:35]  Maybe that's just me.
[01:02:36]  I'm like revealing how I feel about Betto.
[01:02:38]  I don't know.
[01:02:38]  Okay.
[01:02:39]  He's like a Jimmy Carter.
[01:02:40]  You ever look at a picture of Jimmy Carter and James Tellerico side by side?
[01:02:43]  They look like, he looks like his son.
[01:02:45]  It's kind of, you know, I don't know if he's done 23 and me, but it's weird.
[01:02:49]  He kind of talks like Mr. Rogers.
[01:02:52]  And somehow he's the Texas Senate candidate.
[01:02:54]  This is what we got.
[01:02:56]  Why are we like writing this stuff that doesn't help?
[01:02:59]  Anyway, that's why it got under my skin.
[01:03:01]  Any more thoughts here?
[01:03:02]  You want to go to Reasons for Hope?
[01:03:04]  Well, two.
[01:03:04]  You want to talk more about God's rectum?
[01:03:06]  I don't know.
[01:03:06]  Whatever, you choose.
[01:03:07]  It's your choice.
[01:03:08]  Whatever.
[01:03:08]  I will say that the one point that Carter makes that I agree with broadly is that there is a segment and sometimes in some places, a significant segment of people on the left or a certain kind of intelligentsia that are overly dismissive of anything religious.
[01:03:29]  They are absolutely the religion is always oppressive.
[01:03:33]  Religion is always people who are religious are always ignorant.
[01:03:36]  People who are really, whatever.
[01:03:37]  And it's not true and it's also not helpful.
[01:03:42]  And I think that that is a point worth holding on to.

=== Court Blocks and Discord Hope (05:18) ===

[01:03:46]  I don't think that that means that everybody who's Christian who engages in politics or something is a Christian nationalist.
[01:03:52]  And I think that just doesn't work.
[01:03:54]  And I think, again, I absolutely agree.
[01:03:57]  I cannot imagine that Heath Carter is like, oh, I hope this gets picked up by people on the far right or something.
[01:04:04]  But it's the kind of thing that will get cited by somebody when they want to look academic and be like, well, they did.
[01:04:09]  Yeah.
[01:04:09]  Yeah.
[01:04:10]  William Wolf retweeted it.
[01:04:12]  I saw him.
[01:04:13]  Here's what the Princeton, here's what the Princeton professor said.
[01:04:15]  Because they're all anti-Ivy League until somebody in the Ivy League says something that they like or that they can use, and then they'll cash in on that.
[01:04:23]  I think one last point about this, and then I'll get to my reason for hope, is Carter also makes this point.
[01:04:32]  And it's one of these points that I don't actually know what it achieves, where he says, you know, you're not really upset about Christian nationalism.
[01:04:39]  You're just upset about that kind of Christian nationalism.
[01:04:41]  You just oppose a certain kind of Christian nationalism.
[01:04:44]  To which I'll be like, happily, yes.
[01:04:48]  Cool.
[01:04:49]  All right.
[01:04:49]  Let's say that Walter Rauschenbush is a Christian nationalist.
[01:04:52]  We want to call him a Christian nationalist.
[01:04:54]  Oh, okay.
[01:04:55]  I would rather have that kind of Christianity than whatever is peddled by all the other people we've been talking about for the last hour.
[01:05:03]  I'm not sure what that criticism is really supposed to do, unless it's some sort of weird both and kind of thing or like, you know, if they're Christians and you'd say you don't hate all Christians, you have to have room for everybody.
[01:05:17]  Nope, I don't.
[01:05:17]  I don't.
[01:05:19]  And I think that that's like another problematic element to the piece.
[01:05:24]  My reason, excuse me, my reason for hope comes from the state of Washington, Brad, which passed a law banning law enforcement face coverings.
[01:05:33]  And this was significant.
[01:05:34]  California tried to do this recently and it got blocked in court, but the reason it got blocked in court was it specifically targeted federal law enforcement.
[01:05:43]  And the judge in that case said that it was essentially sort of discriminatory, that you couldn't like single out federal law enforcement.
[01:05:50]  Most people read that as kind of a pathway to saying, okay, like, so we're just going to ban face coverings of all law enforcement at all levels.
[01:05:57]  And that's what Washington did.
[01:05:59]  Several other states have similar legislation in the works and, you know, different stages toward passage and so on.
[01:06:05]  But this is obviously aimed at It's aimed at ICE and the tactics and the terror and all the other things.
[01:06:12]  And I thought that that was great to see that happen.
[01:06:14]  We've been kind of waiting to see where it would happen after the California law was blocked because it was only a matter of time before it passed somewhere else.
[01:06:22]  We got a bunch of great reasons for hope in our Discord.
[01:06:24]  So Nathan put in one about a week ago.
[01:06:27]  Indiana judge says state's abortion ban violates religious freedom.
[01:06:30]  Yep.
[01:06:31]  So that's great.
[01:06:32]  One from Dawson.
[01:06:33]  Sorry, lost my place here.
[01:06:34]  The federal appeals court upholds the injunction against Montana's drag ban.
[01:06:39]  So there was a drag ban in Montana, and the federal appeals court said, nope.
[01:06:45]  This is just from earlier this week.
[01:06:48]  The last protester in immigration detention after Trump's campus crackdown, a Palestinian woman, was released.
[01:06:54]  And so that is good news.
[01:06:56]  And there's one that I love, and this is going to feel silly, but I just, I do love it.
[01:07:02]  Ziyel put this in our Discord.
[01:07:05]  Kids in hospital help penguins woo mates with painted pebbles.
[01:07:09]  So kids in the hospital are painting pebbles and it's part of like penguin Twitter patient falling in love.
[01:07:16]  It's springtime.
[01:07:17]  Everyone needs to fall in love in springtime, including penguins.
[01:07:20]  And that's fun.
[01:07:21]  So, all right, y'all, I need you to do a couple of things.
[01:07:24]  One is subscribe to our newsletter.
[01:07:26]  And in that newsletter, you'll get our Sunday interview in print form.
[01:07:30]  You'll get shout outs to new members, Discord comments of the week, but you'll also get ways to connect with us.
[01:07:36]  And one way you can connect with us is on March 31st, our next bonus episode of recording, 7:15 Eastern.
[01:07:42]  Dan and I are going to break down the new Louis Tiru documentary into the Manosphere, which is on Netflix.
[01:07:48]  So go watch that.
[01:07:49]  You will be horrified.
[01:07:51]  You'll need to take a shower.
[01:07:52]  You'll need to drink some whiskey.
[01:07:53]  You should probably go get a shamrock shake from McDonald's and try to reset your equilibrium.
[01:07:58]  Once you do a cryo chamber and a hyperbar chamber and a sauna, you'll be ready for normal.
[01:08:06]  Go watch it and then hang out with us if you're a subscriber March 31st because we're going to break it down and take questions.
[01:08:12]  7:15 Eastern.
[01:08:14]  You'll see other ways to connect with us, office hours and other events that are coming up.
[01:08:19]  Check it out.
[01:08:20]  You'll also see what's going on across Access Monday Media and some other things.
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[01:08:30]  You might have people who don't listen to podcasts.
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[01:08:32]  Tell them to go find us.
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[01:08:36]  You can see, yeah, how big my head is in person and how it barely feels.
[01:08:41]  Sometimes they can see my state mugs, Brad.
[01:08:43]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:08:45]  All the things that Brad loves, my t-shirts, my mugs.
[01:08:47]  Yep, they're all on display.
[01:08:50]  And I need you to subscribe to Reign of Error, which just finished its first season on Access Monday Media and is going to be starting again as soon as possible.
[01:08:58]  So go check that out in the show notes.
[01:09:00]  Appreciate you all.
[01:09:02]  Thanks for being here.
[01:09:03]  Have a good day.
[01:09:04]  Thanks, Brad.